53rd book finished for 2026. In the early days of the 1868 revolution in Madrid the quiet life of an old fashioned Fencing Master is upended after a mysterious young woman convinces him to teach her his art. One of Pérez-Reverte's earliest writings and his first bona fide mystery, 📚💙⚡ 📚💙⏳

Good morning Womble. I'm currently rotating between these four: Le Maître d'escrime by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Sharpe's Escape by Bernard Cornwell, Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Everyone in my family has killed someone by Benjamin Stevenson. Have a great week (hope the movie was good!)

52nd book read in 2026. This is a series I'm really glad to have come across when the ebooks were on sale for a full month. A few chapters into the first novel I grabbed all of them and it's a decision I've not regretted. Connolly started strong, but the series only gets better and deeper 📚💙⚡

51st book read this year. Perry periodically reinvented her series with novels featuring major developments for her characters. This is one of those, and a really good one, with a political conspiracy at the very heart of Special Branch, with great roles for Charlotte, Narraway, Vespasia. 💙📚⚡ 💙📚⏳

This was the US original official statement on the fires relayed by the US ambassador to Canada right before MAGA MI politicians went nuts with threats and Trump jumped in the crazy train with them. Quite the epic diplomatic u-turn they did there. The US has become a joke, a very bad one.

50th book read in 2026. The cuteness and "cosy crime" factors were a bit much for me at times, but it's hard not to succumb to the charm of Miss Maple and the rest of those crime solving Irish sheep, and the novel is pretty entertaining and occasionally really funny. #booksky 📚💙⚡

Good morning Womble. I'm halfway into the supernatural thriller The Unquiet by John Connolly and about a third into Anne Perry's Betrayal at Lisson Grove.

#49 book read in 2026. Second novel in a lovely series where Pérez-Reverte channels with gusto his love for Spain's history, for chivalric literature and the historical adventure stories of Dumas. The adventures of a veteran of the Flanders wars in the 17th century, told with a lot of charm 📚💙⏳

Hello Womble. This week I'm reading the French translation of Limpieza de Sangre, the second Captain Alatriste novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, the sixth Charlie Parker novel The Unquiet by John Connolly, and finishing Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

#48 book read in 2026. This was supposed to be the novel The Unquiet, but I went as far as the intro where I found out its villain got introduced in a novella I had overlooked, so I rather brought out Nocturnes to remedy that. Connolly proved just as good in this more condensed format 💙📚⚡ 📚💙🩸

#47th book for 2026. Dec. 1851. The President blocked from serving another term by the Constitution of the Republic achieves it through a Coup d'État while his agent Lafforgue, aka the Fox, thorn between his patron and his republican convictions, tries to untangle a series of crimes. 📚💙⏳ 📚⚡⚡

Hello Womble! Today I finish Sylvain Larue's Le Crime de l'Odéon. I'm about halfway into the silly fun German sheep detective novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann and I'm starting on my next Charlie Parker, The Unquiet by John Connolly. Have a great week.

So will presumably China, Russia, India and Indonesia.

46th book read in 2026. Another fine Commissario Brunetti mystery, once more showing the hidden layers of Venetian culture away from the pretty touristic clichés (though never far away enough from tourists for Guido, Paola et al. !) A lot of charm, but not without some underlying darkness. 💙📚⚡

#45th book read in 2026. My sixth Ben Kane, but weirdly my first of what he is best known for: Roman historical fiction. Rome is the chronicle of the tribulations and rise to power of the young Galla Placidia, half sister to an incompetent Emperor during the 5th century barbarian invasions. 💙📚⏳

Ah, la France.... (translation of the parodic poster in alt-text, though it kind of speaks for itself)

Good morning Womble. Today I'm finishing Ben Kane's Rome, about the rise to imperial power of a young woman in 410 during the Germanic invasions. Still reading Le Crime de l'Odéon (Sylvain Larue) and Donna Leon's Friends in High Place. Next: Starting Mr T's Children of Strife, most likely.

44th book read in 2026. A first reread of what has become a Nordic noir classic. Nesbø's first two were good, but this third one, the first set in Norway, really brought the series to another level, and is still one of his best, juggling with many arcs and two timelines brilliantly. 💙📚⚡

Hello Womble. I'm in the last stretch of a reread of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast (Rødstrupe), reading Sylvain Larue's Le Crime de l'Odéon, and after a hiatus back to finish the excellent story of ambition and sibling rivalry Rome by Ben Kane, set in a period (5th century) I'm very unfamiliar with.

43rd book read in 2026. A reread started in (gulp!) 2025. As always with Rice there's great moments and storytelling, and it's fun to revisit old friends, though to my taste the best parts were a bit drowned in the tedium of Rice's religious musings that definitely aren't my cup of tea. 💙📚🩸

Ah... I didn't go crawling anywhere but I feel like I had a similar day trying (and failing, 10 pages still to go!) to finish a reread of Anne Rice's The Vampire Armand without falling asleep. 😂 I'm halfway into Sylvain Larue's Le Crime de l'Odéon and a reread of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast.

42nd book read in 2026. The third Maigret, from 1931 is a fun mystery involving a travelling salesman found dead at a hotel in Seine-et-Marne, whose double life gets more and more intriguing as M. l'inspecteur delves deeper into it. #Booksky 💙📚⚡

41st book read in 26. A Chicago cop who retired alone in a tiny rural Irish village strikes a friendship with an odd secretive local kid and gets embroiled in local troubles. Character-driven crime fiction with a heart and soul, a beautifully written slow burn. It won't be my last Tana French! 💙📚

Good morning Womble. Today I should finish The Searcher by Tana French, which turned out to be a really engaging slow burn thriller, very character driven and well written. I'll go back next to The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, with just a fourth left to finish it.

And to get back to Lestat, now they've hit us with a Rolling Stones cover and interview. Lol. They're on fire. *Fingers crossed that they film his live show*

40th book read in 2026. The second novel in a dark and gripping historical crime series from France (that'd really deserve international distribution) where Inspecteur Verne solves a mystery involving a medium while still hunting the Vicar, the abject evil man that made his childhood a nightmare 💙📚⏳

Another really good month of reading for me, with the North, the Billingham, the Portes and the Cornwell standing-out. #Booksky 💙📚

Good early afternoon Womble. This week I'm in the second halves of both Aliette de Bodard's The House of Shattered Wings, and (for even more historical Paris, set during the Monarchie de Juillet restoration in 1831) of the crime thriller Le Fantôme du Vicaire by Éric Fouassier.

#39 read in 2026. Another pretty great Sharpe novel, with Cornwell imagining a fun and inventive way to explain the historical massive explosion of Almeida during a siege in 1810. Good action, many twists, a bit of fierce romance and a fun episodic villain. #booksky 💙📚⏳

#38 read in 2026. Another good very early Maigret which again for its modern language (and attention to police technologies) doesn't strike you as a novel written as early as 1930. Some of the elements of what would become the classic Maigret psychological "method" start to appear here #booksky 💙📚⚡